Lodi crime concerns shift to drugs, property

Friday

Jun 21, 2013 at 12:01 AM

LODI - A group of about 50 Lodi residents attended a town hall meeting Thursday night and indicated that their concerns about crime have shifted from gang violence in 2011 to property and drug crimes in 2013.

Keith Reid

LODI - A group of about 50 Lodi residents attended a town hall meeting Thursday night and indicated that their concerns about crime have shifted from gang violence in 2011 to property and drug crimes in 2013.

The town hall meeting was called by Mayor Alan Nakanishi as one of three gatherings that he hopes will help the community better understand how city government works. Thursday's meeting at Carnegie Forum focused on crime.

The overwhelming message: Lodi has seen less violence since 2011, but property crime is still prevalent, and the majority of those crimes are committed by people addicted to drugs, Police Chief Mark Helms said.

Helms made a 40-minute presentation breaking down the city's crime rates and provided information on how gang crime has subsided over the past two years.

Gang crime declined 50 percent in 2012 from 2011, he said.

"This is not a declaration of victory, but we had 253 gang-related incidents in 2011. We had 126 in 2012," he said. "This isn't just cops going out and putting people in jail. This is a community effort."

Helms asked 13-year-old Cristian Arias to stand up and informed the room the teen decided to leave his gang after working with gang intervention workers Ernest Bass and Ruben Y. Guardiola.

"They were the ones that were able to get into his head," said the teen's mother, Juanita Castro. "I couldn't do it, but they worked so well with him."

Castro said her son was bullied and turned to gangs. He decided to change.

"Now he's reading books. I could have never gotten him to do that," she said.

With gang crime on the decline, property crime makes up 91 percent of Lodi's calls, Helms said, with the other 9 percent related to violent crime.

Some of the department's 2012 statistics include:

» 105,131 calls to dispatchers

» 35,000 of those calls responded to by officers

» 13,716 officer-initiated calls

» 18,653 calls to 911

» 4,182 arrests

» 1,275 felony arrests; 2,907 misdemeanor arrests

» One-third of arrests were of non-Lodi residents.

Several residents spoke to Nakanishi and City Council members JoAnne Mounce and Bob Johnson to express their concerns.

Some thanked Helms for his approach to traffic citations. Helms has asked officers to give more warnings and to ticket drivers mostly when they are endangering others or are likely to cause a crash.

Others complained about bicyclists downtown who ignore street signs.

Cliff Lenzi, who lives on South Pleasant Avenue, asked how he could work better with police to stop drug trafficking in his neighborhood.

He said he often sees teens on bikes selling drugs. He's called police, but response times sometimes are lacking, he said.

Helms said the best thing the community can do is call the department when they see crimes occur.